Table of Contents

• Punnett Squares in Theory
• 1: Introduction
• 2: The Punnett Menu
• 3: Creating combinations chez Punnett
• 4: Insults by the dozen
• 5: Punnett menu revisited
• Punnett Squares in Practice
• 6: Onwards to Genetics
• 7: Recap of genetics vocab
• 8: Can this marriage be saved?
• 9: Vampire Fangs
• 10: Example: Spock and Jax
• 11: Example: Spock and Nurse Chapel
• Bigger Punnett Squares
• 12: And you thought we were done!
• 13: The Dreaded Double Hybrid
• 14: Another Dihybrid Cross
• 15: Is the ratio exact? (Hint: NO!)
• 16: Review

Introduction

In the module on probability, we talked about Laws of Probability that can be applied to, well, just about anything ... rolling dice or determining the probability of survival, or playing the stock market, or genetics, to name a few. In this module, we're going to talk about another approach to probability, which is much more specific to genetics, called Punnett Squares. Punnett Squares were invented by one Reginald Punnett, a British geneticist who also studied ribbon worms and played cricket with G. H. Hardy of Hardy-Weinberg fame, one of the true big cheeses in the genetics world.

In this module, you'll see how Punnett Squares are really just a graphical way of reproducing the basic rules of probability.

You'll also see how to predict the phenotypic outcome from a multi-loci genotypic cross - in other words, how to predict what the kids will look like.